CHAPTER VI
BITS OF BATTLE
On the way over to the barn, where the shell hit the 48th, a piece of a
tree limb smashed into the ground at my feet, following the familiar
whiz just overhead of a large gun missive, with its accompanying wind
gust, and at the same moment something struck with a thud the tree from
which the splinter had come. Glancing up, I noticed a shell lodged in a
fork of the two main branches, that had stuck there without exploding.
For a shell to explode, it is necessary that the nose of the fuse,
containing the detonator, shall come in contact with a solid substance,
in order to make ignition and cause the explosion. This had not been
done; owing to the intervention of kind nature in the shape of the
crotch in that tree catching and holding the shell fast in a firm
embrace, we were saved from that additional disaster and death.
A dried-up creek that was being used by us for a trench on the Ypres
sector was crossed by a wooden bridge about thirty feet long. This
bridge was used as a means of transport at night and by Red Cross men in
the daytime, and was very useful; it was most important that it be kept
in constant repair.
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